On the Sixteenth Day of Christmas

 Again with the guests and lack of time.  That morning we did manage to do the back crosswords. This time around, most of them were a level 3. There seems to be no particular order on the thing. 

The twisty puzzle advent was a 5x5x5 cube.  This one was odd in that the cube was colored with black 'carbon' stickers on it. 

And finally the Puzzle Advent Tree© I gave him a mosaic cube done by none other than John Devost.  George of course put it through Burr tools right away.  He's getting pretty good at that.

Full confession, I'm writing this on day 18 this time around.  Perhaps I can get him to open day 17 and day 18 this morning before we have to run out.  Wish me luck.  Until Tomorrow, Happy Puzzling!

Marking boredom-quintet in f

One of the Joys of my job is the marking. Now today, I have marked 65 summaries, 80 essays,37 IELTS, 50 reading/usage(easy) 82 scripts for the Poly. Big deal I hear you say. Well, no, it isn't. It's a boring deal! I am sick up to my eyeballs of body parts (yes, that was one of the topics) and something about companies. Oh well, only a few more days of it I hope. And since it is my puzzle money I'd best get back to it.

But first...

A puzzle for you all. Today between candidates and making bursts, I was playing with a puzzle called Quintet in F. It is a Stewart Coffin #253 to be exact. This one has 5 little identical f's on it. I've had it on my office desk for a while to play with, but sadly never seem to have the time (a recurrent theme of late) so knowing full well what I had in store for the weekend, I put it in my bag and set off to work.

As you can see, the cage frame is not square. It's offset ever so slightly. This makes it all the more difficult to fit those pieces in. There were many a moment this afternoon when I wanted to sove the darned things into place and pray for a miracle. Sadly, it didn't pay off. Neither did trial and error or counting. I solved this one by thinking! Are you all as shocked as I am? I had around 40 minutes left of my full day testing session and I looked down and suddenly it dawned on me. Aha! or Eureka! If you prefer. Done! Solved! Finished! I'm shocked and pleased I managed it. Next one....Those pesky bears.